No thanks: Dyer and Bramble are not keen on the Rooney Rule coming to the UK

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It is well documented that footballers' memories tend to fail them when it comes to recalling the battles from which they benefit.

How many of this - or the last - generation remember the sterling work of Jimmy Hill in helping to abolish the maximum wage of £20-a-week? (How many of them even know who Jimmy Hill is?)

How many know about George Eastham and his legal action against the retain and transfer system, a fight that resulted in the High Court branding it a restraint of trade that could not be justified?

Amid the sea of cash, the evolving attitudes and the rapid rate of change in our game those men - and landmarks - are either a distant memory or don't even register for some that have cashed in.

Likewise, for some black stars within the most recent generations, the struggles of Paul Canoville, Clyde Best, Leroy Rosenior, John Barnes and Cyrille Regis - just a handful of the people who shattered stereotypes and paved the way for players of African or Caribbean descent to earn respect - are also either hazy or non-existent.

For some of our current generation, Kick It Out - who fought for 20 years to get football to even talk about equality - is now a group that talks too much.

Some of the most recent generation have no real understanding of why experienced, qualified men like Eddie Newton - alongside Roberto Di Matteo as he lifted the Champions League and FA Cup trophies for Chelsea - have not had a managerial job.

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Steve Clarke, another former assistant boss at Chelsea, has already been in charge at West Brom and is in the market for his next job. The contrast between the two men is just a snapshot of the bigger picture, which shows you have considerably less chance of becoming a manager if you have been a black player rather than a white one .

Largely because they illustrate just how much work needs to be done to educate them and the wider public who cannot understand what the problem is and why a Rooney Rule has been mooted.

Dyer and Bramble are scathing about the idea or a derivative. They insist that they want to get jobs on their merits. But what are their merits?

They have never won anything and their coaching achievements are unlikely to come close to those of experienced men like Chris Ramsey, a man badged up to the eyeballs and a mentor for scores of talents over the years, yet has never been a manager.

It is easy, when you've earned 30, 40 or even £50,000-a-week for most of your career, to get to the end of it, fall into a job coaching and wonder what all the fuss is about regarding the lack of black bosses.

It is easy, when you've had it so good for so long, to not then wonder why, out of 92 men in charge of the football clubs in all four divisions, only two are the same colour as you .

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The likes of Mark Chamberlain, Ricky Hill, Bob Hazell, Luther Blissett and Paul Davis have long since given up on waiting for their managerial chance. So too Andy Cole and Ian Wright.

Men like Michael Johnson and Ade Akinbiyi are still optimistic but the statistics suggest they too should not get their hopes up.

PFA numbers suggest 18 percent of those who attend coaching courses are black - yet they make up only around three percent of managers, assistant managers, first-team coaches, technical directors, U21 coaches, U18 coaches, academy managers, goalkeeping coaches and physios.

It is easy, however, if you've benefited from the changing climate of the modern game to not see those statistics as a problem.

Even though Garry Monk landed the Swansea job without having earned his coaching badges. Alan Shearer was handed the Newcastle job without having achieved the Uefa Pro Licence. Same for Gareth Southgate at Middlesbrough and Roy Keane at Sunderland.

Bramble is currently coaching the Under-11's at Ipswich, where he came through as a player. What he fails to consider is the fact that many other black players before him went into coaching at a similar level.

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When jobs higher up the food chain became available they applied. And were overlooked . Time and again.

Realising their time would not come at their clubs, they moved on, applied elsewhere, and got the same response. These were guys who had been good players. Won things. Achieved more, far more, in the game that Bramble and Dyer did.

Those men, however, found the game had effectively finished with them while their white counterparts were getting on.

So the black players/coaches either accepted their lot and stayed where they were (not), left the game altogether, or became campaigners for change, demanding to be included into football's managerial family.

The Rooney Rule may or may not be the answer. The debate around it, however, is entirely relevant.

It is a debate that has come about because English football has realised that two managers out of 92 is an embarrassment. It is a figure which shows we have actually gone backwards as ten years ago we had three and at the start of this season we had none.

When 30 percent of our playing contingent is black, there should be no reason whatsoever why more should not go into management.

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“I want to be interviewed because the chairman wants to interview me,” Dyer says. “I don’t want to be interviewed because it’s filling a quota. I don’t want to be on a shortlist because football clubs are told I have to be because I’m black."

Does Dyer or Bramble really think the black former players and coaches pushing for change want handouts on the basis of their skin colour? Do they really think they want to be given jobs on a plate?

Do they really think that the men that have gone before them, higher-profile stars who have lifted silverware and shown themselves to be more than capable, want to be patronised in that way?

Dyer wants to "prove myself independently of quotas". So do they.

Dyer wants to "impress them with my CV". So do they

Dyer wants to dazzle them with his "ideas about the game".

Bless.

“If I become a manager, it is my results that will inspire people. You hear a lot about there not being enough black coaches, but you’ve got to do well when you get the chance.

“I just think it needs one high-profile black manager to do well, to exceed expectations and really improve a team and a football club, and that will be the catalyst."

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Again, that was Dyer, clearly forgetting the example of Chris Hughton who led Newcastle - then a basket case of a club that had been relegated - back to the Premier League in his first season in charge.

Football here does not want to change. Not really. It has a set way of doing things, not necessarily racist but definitely exclusive, and doesn't see any reason to move away from it.

In the meantime our game wrings its hands and says the right things but until only a couple of months ago the Football League wouldn't even bring up the subject of black managers at its AGM, despite promising the Players Union that it would do so.

Dyer adds: "How many black people have applied for coaching jobs or management jobs and not got them? We don’t know. We haven’t been shown any proof black coaches and managers have gone for jobs and not got them."

You might want to try talking to your own union Kieron. Both you and Titus. Try talking to some of the ex-players who will tell you how the land really lies.

There is no centralised system to monitor job applications and, as we all know, clubs do not make public the people that apply for jobs.

But neither Dyer nor Bramble will struggle to find someone - black or white - who can tell them just how bad the problem is.

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"At the moment I think the Rooney Rule is a disgrace." says Bramble, "I think it’s disgraceful that someone might be shortlisted for the job just because of their skin colour."

And actually, he is right. Absolutely right. It shouldn't have to come to this.

But given, with respect to him, the fact that has no silverware to fall back on as a player himself and that success with the Ipswich Under-11's will only take him so far, on what other basis is he likely to be shortlisted when HE wants to become a manager?

They are throwing the punches in a fight that you, Kieron Dyer, Tom Huddlestone, Danny Webber, Liam Rosenior and so many other young black men studying for their badges, will hopefully end up benefiting from in years to come.

Don't dismiss them or deride them. Don't pander to the myth that black men in football want jobs handed to them on a plate or want something that they are not prepared to work for.

Talk to them. Understand what they are doing and why they are doing it. Without the people that have fought for you over the past few decades you wouldn't even have a voice, let alone coach the kids at Ipswich.